We are welcoming a new member of the Ghent Centre for Buddhist Studies: FWO junior postdoctoral fellow Dr. Xiaoming Hou. Her research focuses on scholastic practices in medieval Chinese Buddhism and the cross-cultural transmission of Buddhism, with particular interest in exegetical traditions. Her current FWO-funded project, Visualizing Doctrine: A Study of Exegetical Diagrams in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (8th–10th Centuries), examines exegetical diagrams (fenmen tu 分門圖 and kewen 科文) from Dunhuang and their role in the transmission of scholastic knowledge. It investigates how diagrammatic and material practices shaped scholastic reasoning and pedagogical methods in local Buddhist communities, reframing these diagrams as epistemological tools situated between text and image.
She received her Ph.D. in 2022 from EPHE/PSL (École Pratique des Hautes Études/Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) in Paris, Department of Religions and Systems of Thought. Her doctoral thesis, Pratiquer le bouddhisme en chinois: traduction et reconstruction des enseignements sur la méditation bouddhique du IIe au VIe siècles en Chine, explores the interdependent dynamics between meditation and exegesis in early medieval China.